Example: In the avant-garde fashion show, Emily wore a taffeta
evening skirt with combat boots and a wife-beater.

Celebrity quote:
“I was wearing that white wife-beater
and the glove. I swore I was Michael Jackson. Then I found out I wasn't
Michael Jackson and it broke my heart. ... And Ariel from ‘The Little
Mermaid.’ I thought I was her too.”
-Singer Fefe Dobson

In the US, a wife-beater is a
t-shirt, sometimes called a “muscle shirt” since it allows
the wearer to show off his or her muscles. But in some parts of the UK,
wife-beater is slang for Stella Artois, the
Belgian lager. Coincidence? Probably not. While the word’s history
is uncertain, most people associate the fashion with Marlon Brando, who
reprised his Broadway role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 movie A Streetcar
Named Desire.

Not known for his sensitivity towards the ladies, Kowalski
didn’t just wear a wife-beater. In the
most famous scene from that film, he comes in drunk after a poker game
and attacks his pregnant wife. When she runs away to the neighbors’
apartment upstairs, he stands outside shouting her name: “Stella!
Stell-ahhhhh!” Of course, there is also the possibility that drinking
too much Stella Artois might make men more violent, but probably not more
than any other beer.

Since Brando gave the shirt its sex appeal, it has become
increasingly fashionable to wear underwear as outerwear and it’s
no longer taboo to show your boxers above your jeans. But this casual
fashion statement is not appreciated by all. Last year, one West Virginia
high school made special laws forbidding students from coming to class
in loungewear, including wife-beaters, pajamas,
visible underpants and bedroom slippers.

What’s new at Slang City?
“Say, daddy-o, what axe you play?” Translated quotes from
the Oscar nominated film Ray.